Former Cisco Executive Gets 6 1/2 Years For Fraud

Robert S. Gordon, 43, of Palo Alto, Cisco's former director of corporate finance and business development, entered guilty pleas to two counts of wire fraud and one count of insider trading on July 30.

He was accused of defrauding the networking company of more than $50 million between 1997 and 2000, as well as collecting another $2.6 million from insider trading.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel imposed the prison sentence Friday after considering a request for leniency on the grounds that Gordon was mentally ill at the time of his crime. Psychiatric reports suggested Gordon had been suffering from latent schizophrenia since childhood.

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